Barth and Kant

We cannot deal evasively with Jesus Christ as one does with an idea.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II.ii.660

While Barth concedes that Kant 'has expressed the essential concern of Christian ethic by pointing out that of itself the concept of what is pleasing and useful and valuable does not give us the concept of what is obligatory', he also takes Kant to task for not acknowledging the reality that God's command may indeed result in what is pleasing and good:

The obligation revealed and grounded in the person and work and lordship of Jesus Christ fulfils the idea in all its strictness. It is a categorical imperative, not merely in name, but in fact. And as such - unlike the Kantian imperative - it reveals the fact that to obey it is not merely the highest duty but also the highest good.

Jesus Christ is our categorical imperative!

Still reeling from reading Kant

I am still somewhat agape at the sheer scope of what Kant attempts in his Groundwork and the impressive rationality of it all. One thought that came to me was this: in debating against atheists, I have noticed Christian apologists still resort to the argument from morality. It is something like this (actually it isn't an argument so much as a challenge or observation): atheists have no grounds for a particular morality; yet human beings have a strong moral instinct. So: if you are an atheist, you can say something is morally wrong, but not consistently.

But Kant was attempting to find exactly these grounds. In other words, he claimed to have found a way in which moral truth was discoverable by reason alone, with or without divine help. By means if the categorical imperative, Kant was (he thought) able to put morality on a consistent footing that enables a moral discussion to ensue on the basis of rationality. The immoral would also be the irrational, on this basis.

Now, there are problems here of course, but I am just painfully aware that Christian apologists don't seem to address this claim to have found a universal basis for morality aside from divine revelation. Mind you, their opponents don't seem to be very good at putting the argument back to Christians either...

The other thing from Kant was this. Kant tries to sheer all manner of self-interest away from moral consideration. Intentions must be as pure as possible to bring about a truly moral act. As he says:

From love of humankind I am willing to admit that even most of our actuons are in confimrity with duty; but if we look more closely at the intentions and aspiratons in them we everywhere come upon the dear self, which is always turning up; and it is on this their purpose is based, not on the strict command of duty, which would often require self-denial.

My problem with his instance on the lack of self-interest in creation is that this actually dehumanises the moral agent. Why should self-interest always be corrupting in this way, so long as it is not the wrong kind of self-interest? This is what Augustine might say: one ought to love oneself IN GOD, just as one ought to love one's neighbour in God. The right kind of benefits accruing need not entirely sour a moral act. It is impossible to love, in a way, without some form of self-interest. Without self-interest of a kind, love itself disappears... it becomes merely formal, or dutiful, and not loving.

Kant's 'Groundwork'

I have put off reading Kant directly for too long, though of course I am familiar with his ideas.

But, I have been set to read his 'Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'. Of course, one discovery was that by 'metaphysics' he means something like 'rational concepts not empirically derived at all'.

Anyhow, this from him:

Nor could one give worse advice to morality than by wanting to derive it from examples. For, exvery example of it represented to me must itself first be appraised in accordance with principles of morality, as to whether it is alos worthy to serve as an original example, that is, as a model; it can by no means authoritavitively provide the concept of morality. Even the Holy One of the Gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before he is cognized as such; even he say of himself: why do you call me (whome you see) good?...But whence have we the concept of God as the highest good? Solely from the idea of moral perection that reason frames a priori and connects inseparabloy with the concept of a free will. Imitation has no place at all in matters of morality, and examples serve only for exnouragement, that is, they put beyond doubt the practicability of what the law commands and make intuitive what the pratcice rule expresses more generally, but they can never justify setting aside thier true original, which lies in reason, and guiding oneself by examples.

Wow, one thing you have to give him is his determination to be consistently rational at all times. But to assert that imitation has no place in morality? My goodness! Also, here we see the old Euthyphro debate about whether God is good or good is God. Is good subject to some concept or law of the good? Or, is he somehow more arbirtrarily sovereign over it, such that what is 'good' may be subject to change or alteration in some way?